Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge:The British in India

基本信息

Series:Princeton Studies in Culture/Power/History

Format:Paperback / softback 216 pages

Publisher:Princeton University Press

Imprint:Princeton University Press

ISBN:9780691000435

Published:8 Sep 1996

Weight:348g

Dimensions:232 x 156 x 14 (mm)

頁面參數僅供參考，具體以實物為準

書籍簡介

伯納德·科恩對作為一種知識和文化現象的帝國建設的興趣，為二十多年來現代印度文化的學術研究設定了議程。他早期的出版物顯示了英國在印度的戲劇性創新，包括税收和法律制度，如何導致了印度社會關係的根本性結構變化。這本集合了他過去15年的著作，討論了殖民主義影響通常被忽視的領域。這些文章構成了對英國發現、收集和編纂印度社會信息的方式的多層面探索，這些信息有助於殖民文化霸權和政治控制。

科恩認為，英國東方學家對印度語言的研究對於殖民主義的控制和指揮項目非常重要。他還斷言，一個看似最温和、最容易受到本土影響的殖民權力領域--主要是法律--實際上負責從制度上重新激活關於如何管理一個由“他人”組成的殖民社會的特殊英國觀念。他展示了導致輝煌的古董收藏、考古發現和攝影考察的東方主義想象力，實際上是構建一個可以被更好地包裝、劣化和統治的印度的形式。最後一篇關於布料的文章表明，衣服是如何成為殖民主義和反殖民主義歷史的一部分。

Bernard Cohn’s interest in the construction of Empire as an intellectual and cultural phenomenon has set the agenda for the academic study of modern Indian culture for over two decades. His earlier publications have shown how dramatic British innovations in India, including revenue and legal systems, led to fundamental structural changes in Indian social relations. This collection of his writings in the last fifteen years discusses areas in which the colonial impact has generally been overlooked. The essays form a multifaceted exploration of the ways in which the British discovery, collection, and codification of information about Indian society contributed to colonial cultural hegemony and political control.

Cohn argues that the British Orientalists’ study of Indian languages was important to the colonial project of control and command. He also asserts that an arena of colonial power that seemed most benign and most susceptible to indigenous influences?—?mostly law?—?in fact became responsible for the institutional reactivation of peculiarly British notions about how to regulate a colonial society made up of “others.” He shows how the very Orientalist imagination that led to brilliant antiquarian collections, archaeological finds, and photographic forays were in fact forms of constructing an India that could be better packaged, inferiorized, and ruled. A final essay on cloth suggests how clothes have been part of the history of both colonialism and anticolonialism.

作者簡介

伯納德·S·科恩是芝加哥大學歷史和人類學的名譽教授。他是《歷史學家中的人類學家及其他論文》和《印度：一個文明的社會人類學》。

Bernard S. Cohn is Professor Emeritus of History and Anthropology at the University of Chicago. He is the author of An Anthropologist among the Historians and Other Essays and India: The Social Anthropology of a Civilization.